Facing Depression

Steve Pavlina just pushed out another good article, Overcoming Depression. In short, the article says depression is caused by the fact that we dwelling our thoughts on the things we don't like and don't want, and to overcome depression, we need move our thoughts away and think about things we want and like, thus feeling better. It all reads very reasonable, and being such a successful person, it all sounds very convincing. However, I am afraid his approach will not work.

I agree with his reason of the cause of depression and I agree with his reason that we have freedom in our mental world and can imagin good stuff thus stop depression. But that is easy to be said than actually to manage. Say you are fired and you don't have money to pay the mortgage tomorrow, how difficult would it be to just go watch a comedy movie and shift your thoughts away from the fact? It is very difficult. Even you are such a mentally strong person that can forge your mind to a much better world than what the cruel reality is, I suspect that will be good at all. Many people in mental institution do just that -- creating a better world in their mind and thus feeling happy. I admit there is significant difference between mentally ill and conciously manipulating our mood as Steve Pavlina suggests, but I don't see much difference in the methodology itself.

Mentally creating a drastically different world than the reality only creates what I call pseudo-happiness. Our true happiness roots in our ability of survival, pseudo-happiness is not fit to survive at all.

I think to recover from depression, we need dig a little deeper to the cause of depression. Yes, from the surface, we feel depression because we are dwelling our thoughts on things we don't want and don't like. But tring to turn our thoughts away from it is in fact, an acknowlegement of that we let the fact depress us. Conciously, we try to think something happy so we get away from depression; but subconciously, we confirms to ourself whatever cause us depressed will continue to derpress us unless the fact is gone. Unfortunately, the reality and facts often do not change as easily as we would like it to and our acknowledgement doomed us to be under the mercy of depression for a long period. It is like curing a skin cancer with a bandaid: it seems we are tring to cure the symptons, but in fact we made sure that sympton will not disappear.

The root of depression is not the situations, and it is not because we dwelling our thoughts on what we don't want and don't like. The root of depression is the very reason that we don't want and don't like such situations. By taking such a narrow view to an unchangeable situation, we let it to depress ourselves. The root of depression is HOW we think on the reality and facts. We see our current situation from an angle or window that renders it as bad, but fail to see there are plenty of other aspects that we still can draw joys from; we fail to realize that anything, if really is bad, it can only turn better and better; and we fail to realize that our situation probably is not bad at all, because there are plenty of situations that are much worse and amazingly there are plenty of joyful people that lives happily despite their much worse situations ... ... What is the worst could happen?

Say I currently is earning a mediocre salary and living in a small apartment. But thinking on how much I earn and how I don't have a house doesn't depress me. It probably will not depress you either depending on where you come from. But if Bill Gates suddenly be ordered to surrender all his estates, it is likely he would be very depressed even though he still can draw a much higher salary and live in a much better house than I am. The depression is caused by how we think about situation, not by the situation itself.

So to cure from depression, we need face whatever depressing, and realize it is not necessarily bad, and ultimately, start to enjoy the fact. Only by this, we can ensure the depression does not come back after the 30-minute walk or 2-hour movie.

Like cancer, there are all different situations that lead us to depression. And like we know how to cure cancer, we know how to cure depression, which is to change our view of facts and start to enjoy our life. And like curing cancer, there are all kinds of situations lead us to depression and curing depression is not easy. But not like cancer, we know all the depression is curable. Why? Because just look around, your depressing situation is not yours alone, and not every one in your shoes are depressed, and many of them are actually joyful, so why not you?

It is all mental. But mentally forging a conflicting happiness will never be as happy if we mentally draw joys from the the same reality. Just open your inner eyes :)

Die in a Car Accident

"I will die in a car accident."

I am a bad driver. I have acquired 3 speeding tickets in less than 6 months; I have trashed my previous car; I have semi-trashed my friend's car; I have been hit by a car behind; and I have put several scratches on my current car.

However, it is hard to convince myself and admit I am a bad driver by my concious. You see, I am not aggressive; I am patient; I always keep quite a distance from the cars in front; I am not clumsy and I have often been regarded by myself and my friends as skillful in driving. Naturally, when the police and my wife accusing me being a bad driver, I would response by thinking more of the opposite.

Well, I do have one flaw that I have to admit: I am often absentminded.

Driving is very joyful to me. It gives me uninterruppted space and time to enjoy the weather, enjoy the road, enjoy other folks that on the road, enjoy the speed, enjoy the control, enjoy the traffic, ..., most of all, I can think on the problem I care without interruption. I guess that is the reason that I hate to admit I am a bad driver. Admitting being a bad driver would take quite some joys out of the driving.

Nevertheless, I need be smart. If I ever get involved in a serious accident, I could lose a great amount of joy that is incoming. Reminding myself to drive with attention is a smart choice.

So after another incident that I barely missed, I said to myself, "I will die in a car accident". Well as long as we are driving, and given that the risk of traffic death is far greater than other cause, the statement is almost a truth given we drive long enough. And admitting I am a bad driver adds another certainty to it. "I will die in a car accident."

I am not really worried about death, but if I have choice, I want enjoy my life as much as possible. Shorten my life is one way to cut my joys in total. So being smart, I need make sure my life reach certain span.

Well, I can't ensure anything that is out of my control, but hopefully, by visualizing the picture of my death, I can postpone it, hopefully long enough until the oil price reach so high that we are restricted from drive so much.

Get Into the Game

It often happens that we know the tasks in front, we are aware of the goals we set or set by others, and we are fully concious of the huge benefits of reaching the goals, as well as the big penalties if we miss the goals, but we just don't have the mood to do it, we conciously or subconciously searching for excuses to procastinate.

Here is a tip I often used to spice up the game: set a record and try to break it.

Say I have a project to finish, and subconciously I felt the project boring. "OK, " I say to myself, "rather than doodling my morning off, I am gonna set a record on this type of project. I will finish it in HALF hour." Well, I know half hour is not possilble to finish the project as my experience tells, but for a "boring project", half an hour is about the optimum time (for me) to engage.

Next step is very important, plan. The more impossible the task appears, the more important it is to analyze and make strategies. Well, of course don't spend the whole half hour planning, just look at the project, and say "here is 1-2-3 to finish the project, and I know just what to do to finish it". Off I go.

Important: Keep timing every now and then, and trying very hard to beat the clock, as if it is the deadline of your life.

Sometime I do finish the project. "Wow, How amazing!". Most time, I couldn't finish it. "Good game. I will beat it next time. But I did well this time." Most of the time, I will be set into such a good track and keep on going overtime -- If the project ever got finished, I may just start another one. But if the project is really boring, I procastinate it to the next deadline and went on browsing popurls.com, with a much comfortable feeling that I had made significant effort on the task and nobody, not anyone, even my concious, should blame me." :)

Goals

The only purpose of goals to a game is to bring excitness to the game players. We experience great joys when we make effort and gain progress toward the goals of the game. And I think the purpose of the goals to our life is the same -- to maximize our joys during our course of life.

Life is a game. However, the goal of this game is not strictly defined by the game designer (God?). There are certain life goals are set by the society, our parents, and we accepted from education, but largely, goals of life are set by ourselves. You want to be a scientist and discover theories that nobody can understand? OK. You want to be a doctor and cure cancer? OK. You want to get rich? OK. What ever you choose, work on it, and enjoy while you are working on it.

A good game needs a proper goal. The goal should not be too easy. Shooting basketballs against 5-year-olds are not much fun; so is the goal of become homeless. The goal should not be too difficult. Shooting basketballs agains NBA giants are not much fun (unless they are "playing" with you); so is tring to be the richest person in the world. How do we know which goal is best? We don't. But there is a easy measurement -- the joy we experience at reaching the goal. We design our goals and we have all the freedom to change our goals, anytime, anyplace.

The goal itself should directly link to your joy. Reaching goals in a game "proves" we are better than your opponents (whether it is trur or not), which is very joyful. The goals of life should have the same effect, to make us feel superior than someone else. However, most of us don't realize we have the freedom to choose whom to compare with, and more importantly, on which attributes to compare.

The Role of Robots

Just after I blogged about robots, we got this piece hit the news: Robot Dogs Evolve Their Own Language, and my thought is -- what a waste of talents.

Well, I should not call it a "waste". If this is a waste, there are much more human activity are more wasteful than this and, ..., keep going, I will start to question the purpose of life again. People are intrigued by the idea of human like robots, and I can imagine the research attracts many focus and more importantly, necessary fundings, and possible economical incentives. It can be very joyful playing around these robot dogs, which is exactly the meaning of life. However, I can't help thinking that we, as our common interest, are pursuing a not so realistic objective -- Robots that as sophosticated as real human.

The truth is, we are so used to our amazing ability and take the amazing sophistication of our mind too much for granted. Just as we amazed on how "rain man" can posess such a "potential" of memorization and calculation, as we amazed at how a cheetah runs, how strong a spider is, and how a computer computes, ..., we forgot that we are much more sophisticated than any of these. How human mind works is largely a mystery, an amazing mystery. How is it possible to create this mystery in programs? Well, I should not say it definitely since I don't have proof. So it is my guess based on my personal perceptions.

My opinion is, a robot trying to immitating human's sophistication is useless, unless it is for playing purpose, such as a toy. Robot is a tool. If a war ever happens between human and robots, robots can't win. However, if a war happens between two human groups, and one with better robots, that group will be at great advantage. We excels over other lifes by our ability of using tools.

The best tool is not a tool with its own mind. A best tool is the one can do exactly what we intend it to do. A best robot is not a robot that can think for us. A best robot is a robot can interpret exactly what we tell it to do after we went through our thinking process. Leave the thinking to us, and leave the definite tasks to robots.

I have to admin a tool with its life-like simulation is interesting and useful, from an aspect of toys, that is.

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PS: After I wrote this, I did a search in the blogsphere, many interesting opinions:

• Robots won't pull the trigger


• The Inevitable Decline and Fall of Man


• Robot Ethics


• Do Robots Have the Right to Life?


• The Fourth Law of Robotics


• Robots Humans Philosophically


• Who's Afraid of Robots

Robots vs. Human

Despite many fictions and movies and much of our own imagination, there will never be a war between robots and human. If that war ever get started, it will be over before one would realize. Computers will never reach the sophistication of a human mind. Computers will never survive an uncontrolled environment.

We take it for granted, and we never appreciate how magnificent our mind is -- until we trying to create one with computers.

Computers are really good at following specific, extremely simple instructions, such as add a number, output 5 volts signal, etc. They can do it very fast, faster than any human mind can do. The reason behind computer's this ability is because it does not think. It does not think which next instruction should be, how valid next instruction is, and consequence of executing an instruction. If you give it an instruction to shutdown, it does it without "hesitation". It is like drive a car at full speed without breaks and wheels. The reason it doesn't crash is only because it runs at a controlled environment. It works because we "think" for them and created the empty space for them to run headlessly.

Human mind is the result of evolution, a result to survive an uncontrollable, largely unknown world. Flexibility is the key to survive. In order to survive, we need be able to change our action before it is too late. If we are running fast, we need be able to stop or turn direction before we hit the wall. This flexibility significantly slows us down, but it is necessary for us to survive.

It is extrememly sophisticated for our mind to possess this flexibility. Lets say you were running forward, then you need prepared to stop is a wall showing up in the front. Then you need prepared to recognize the wall when you see it, or hear it, or sense it with your sixth sense. Then you need process all thoses signals coming from your senses, determing which signal is OK to ignore, and which signal needs more process, and which signal need necessary change of action. If we are programing the robot to do all these, we are writing "if"s and "else if"s pages after pages. There are simply too many variables out there.

If all the variables are known, the robot still can win. It is just a matter of ennumerate all the variables and choose corresponding actions on any of the cobination of these variables. Surely it will run much slower than reckless running, but given the exponential growth of cpu speed, it may still run faster than human after all these "thinking". Then, there is one last necessary part in order to survive -- prepare for the unknown. We need the flexibility of taking necessary actions to survive if an unknown variable or a variable with unexpected values pops up. Should we proceed? What if that "unknown" is deadly to proceed? Should we turn or even return? What if that "unknown" is nothing serious? Most robots will either crash or unnecessarily stop functioning at this point.

Well the key that human deal with unknown is risk judgement and learning. To judge the risks, we are able to quickly connect the unknown to what is known, not by enumerating all the memory we have, but by massive parallel retrieving the most relavant memory, and quickly reach a judgement. Well, frankly, I don't know I our mind does it. I just appreciats that it does it. Now comes learning, which involves a feedback on the result or concequence of our action against that "unknown". Again, another amazing process.

So, after postulate on all these amazing stuffs our mind does, I don't think it is slow at all. If you program a database, you may have that experience of slowness when retrieving certain data over a large database. Well, human mind can retrieve the most relavant info on a split second. Do you ever have that feeling of instincts? Instincts shows up in mind faster than we can reallize, which essentially is a data retrieving process.

Well, I should not say definitely that robot will not evolve to the sophistication that matches human mind. But I suspect, but reaching that sophistication, the computer probably will be bulky and slow, and thus, useless.

Sophistication of Joy

More sophisticated lifes have more sophistication in joy.

For bacteria, they just eats and reproduce whenever they can. I guess they don't find other joys. For us, only eating good food is joyful. And even that, over eating is not joyful. If you eats lobsters whole day with unlimited supply, pretty soon eating lobster may seems more like a difficult task than being joyful. As a part, hunger is a necessary components in bringing the best joy in eating. I have that experience of after climbing a mountain whole day that a very ordinary meal brings my most satisfaction of eating.

Human is the most sophiscated life so far on earth. We takes joy in most diversified ways. We still takes great joy in having sex and raising kids, but most may argue those being the only joy or even the greatest joy in life. (On think of that, maybe the first purpose of life for God is to make us survive as whole life being; then God has much more other grand purpose for his life experiment? Not that matters to us :)) Nowadays, plenty of people takes joy in homosexual relationships, kids free life, ... whatever, just doing whatever one finds joy is pretty meaningful in life.

I guess I have to say something about smartness in taking joy, otherwise I may sound like encouraging people to reckless pursue joys.

Is breaking into a restaurant and eats then leave without paying joyful? It could be if you were not beaten while you eats and the food is good, and you were in that eating mood. Then the next few hours or days or even more, you probably will not be as joyful as you would be if you had followed the social rules. So while there is nothing wrong in persuing the immediate joy, most of human beings are smart enough to take as much joys (not just in one hour, but in days, weeks, years, and even whole lifespan) as possible. Most of us seems also care a lot about magnitude of joy. We seems value the joy of receiving a life-time award so much that we may spend many days or years of not-so-joyful time to get that. Whether that great joy worth those no-joy time varies from person to person though.

Another sophistication appears when some activity, or things seems very joyful to some people, at sometime, while it does not bring much joyness for other people. Some is straight forward to understand. Eating when you need eat is more joyful than eating extra (at least for me). Some people find chatting with friends or even chatting with strangers very joyful, while some may find talking to machines may joyful. There are certain grand joyness we share. Such as being rewarded by society from your creativity or hard work. And there could be different paths leading to certain grand joyness that may vary in joyfulness for different people. If you can, choose and enjoy your life to the maximum.

What is Joy?

Eating delicious food often is joyful; drinking water often is joyful; and going to bathroom when we have to is joyful. Playing games often is joyful; being acknowledged by friends is often joyful; knowing self is doing better than others is often joyful; Counting earned money is often joyful; counting good memories is often joyful; success is often joyful. Writing can be joyful; programing can be joyful; discovering the nature can be joyful ... ...

For simple lifes, joy is very straight. For virus, I would say joy comes from reproduction, because that is about the only thing that they do. Baceteria is more sophiscated. It appears they find eating joyful as well as reproduction. It makes sense that although reproduction is very joyful, but if it has to rely on other hosts to achieve it (like virus), the joy is just unreliable, isn't it? Bacteria certainly have a more stable means of reproduction joy by taking the joy of getting food.

Of course, the joy of bacteria is very unreliable as well. They are very dependent on envrionment. They are most easily being killed by slight changing of their habitat. They survive by numbers and diversification. More sophiscated lifes on earth finds joys in other activities: swiming, running, bathing sunshine or seeking water, and, of course, having sex and raising next generations. The reason there are such joy in having sex I guess must have something to do with a better way of reproduction.

OK, reading what I have wrote so far sounds like I am saying that the life's purpose is to reproduce or ultimately survival of life. I guess so. But whatever that high purpose or meaning is God's or mysterious nature's purpose. For us, the meaning of life is just the joy. I guess God conditioned us so we happen to take joy in accomplishing certain grand scale purpose, so we just need to taking that joy to get a meaningful life.

We, as individual humble life on earth, is at no dimension to see god's purpose. And whatever that purpose is, it is not relevant to us at all. It is possible that we, or the whole universe is just a "Matrix" that God creates for his own ammusment. God's purpose is not the meaning of life for us.

But joy is. So find whatever activities, things, thoughts that we finds joyful, and enjoy it. That is the meaning of life.

Meaning of Life

Human beings are amazing creatures. I don't imagin chickens in a chicken farm ever question their meanings of life. :) But I would say every human will wonder this quesion at sometime, even losing sleeps on it. There are a list of answeres here, feel free to choose one.

However, no matter what answer we end up with, the question come back from time to time, what is the meaning of life? What is life's purpose?

I finally decided that I have spent too much time on this question and come to this conclusion (of course, my personal conclusion only): the meaning of life for human is not much different than the meaning of any life on earth; the meaning of life is joy.

Do We Possess Psychic Power?

In a recent blog, Steve Pavlina compares the sixth sense to our five other senses and emphasizes the sixth sense has the same limit as our normal senses, and we should not deny our psychic power just because we can't sense stuff out of its limit. More specificly, you can't see beyond the corner, so can''t you sense anything beyond the limit of your psychic power.

Sounds paradoxical again. So why do we feel Steve's comparison is flawed?

I think the difference is that our normal senses are developed through feedbacks. Isn't the psychic power developed through feedbacks as well? Yes, but it is only a partial feedbacks (my way of saying "incorrect feedbacks"). Proper feedbacks should include all signals we receive through that certain sense. For example, vision, we see a tree in a distance, then we walk closer, the tree gets bigger in the vision; if we walk away, the tree get smaller in the vision. Taste, if we put candy in mouth, sweet; spit the candy out, still some sweet left, but weaker; if we add salt in the mouth, yep, sweet is gone, it is salty now. Same can be tested with all five normal senses. Can we do this with our psychic sense? What are you capable of sensing? Does the sense gets stronger or weaker when the "distance" to the sources changes? Steve uses an opening question: "Can you guess my name?" Can you? OK, psychic senses has limits just as our other senses do. Then tell me how I can move my name closer to your sense, how can I move it into your limit. Do you know your limit? OK, name is totally out of the limit. Do you know which is in your psychic power limit, and can you test it the way we test our vision and hearing?

Chances are, the sixth sense is totally different than our other physical senses. As Steve calls it, the psychic sense contains huge amount of noise. So sometime we sense it, and sometime we don't, and yet sometime we sense the wrong signal (noise).

Noise is not a problem. In scientific study, we deal with noises all the time. To test signals with noise, we use statistics. The correct term here is correlation. If we really want to test our psychic power, find a subject that we think ourselves are most strong at, for example, telepathy. Then fix the variables as much as we can. In this example, fix the target person, say your wife. Fix the subjects, say numbers from 1-100. Then fix the time and weather and distance etc. Now fix the term, say ask the target write down the number, think hard on it for 1 minute, and you write down whatever you senses; then go on to another. Some sort of lights or bells synching you and the target will be very helpful here. You need test it as many times as possilble, for example, take two guesses every day around the same time and same settings. And of course, log down the results truthfully. By truthfully I mean you need log down whatever you senses even if you sense nothing (log "nothing") or rose (log "rose"). Then sum the results up after say 100 or 1000 guesses. If your senses doesn't have much noise, maybe 10 guesses is sufficient. But if your senses have quite some noise, you probably need take much more tests. To read the results, the simplest way is count how many you guessed correctly against how many that you didn't. If most of the time you guessed correctly, then you have psychic power. In many situations, you may not know what kind of your signals is. For example, you may sense rose whenever your target thinks number 12. Correlation will help. You count how many times you sense rose when your target thinks 12 and normalize the answer. If you know what to looking for, it is easy, just count the number of times of rose-12 pair against allother-12 pair. If you don't know what to look for, you need to full correlation calculation, which is a statistics of every possible answer pairs. You probably need a computer program to do that. Send me your log to me if you need help. The answer of full correlation may suprise you. Say if you consistently sense 1 when your target thinks 2, you have a strong psychic sense.

It is not so easy when the noise is big. To tell a signal among strong noises you have to measure it many many times, thus often this kind of psychic power came to no use at all.

We should take caution of our natural habit of throwing away "bad" signals when we are looking for certain answers, conciously or unconsciously. If you sometime feel you are on a lucky streak (or bad luck streak) in front of a slot machine, then you are having that habit.

"Safe is Risky"

Seth Godin talks about "safe is risky". I heard this before. Steve Pavlina has talked about "how to earn 10000 in one hour" and Robert Kiyosaki advocates abandoning 401k safenet.

Sounds paradoxical, the truth of such phrases lie in a shift in logics. Both "safe" and "risky" talks about "danger". The former stays away from danger while the latter is easy to get into danger. However, the truth of "safe is risky" comes when you are not looking at "danger" but rewards, such rewards that only a very small portion of elites are getting. You can't possibly to play safe to become elite.

Sounds paradoxical, because it is a paradox, for the majority of us -- non elites. The fact that some can become elite is exactly because most of us can't become elites. And therefore, for most of us, danger is much closer than big rewards jackpot. When you looking at the danger, safe is safe and risky is risky. Can you afford the risk?

We all want to, and believe we are elites, consciously or unconsciously. Dale Carnegie says that "feeling importance" is our basic need. Naturally, we are inclined in over-looking danger and focusing on elite rewards. I was such an addicts. Well, most of us need a second conscious to remind us that we are much more easier to slip to the danger side than reaching that rewards.

PS: Apparently I was talking completely different subject than what Seth Godin was talking about. As to getting blog traffic, dependending of the intention, if the only goal is just getting some decent traffic and not for the elite goal, doing what statistics tell you to do is very safe and smart. If you are aiming at become an elite blogger, doing it the "risky" way is the only chance -- although the majority of us will not become elite blogger, no matter what. Well blog faithfully, at least you won't think your blog is trash by yourself :).

PPS: While I am on Seth Godin, he published a list of 50 "rules" to get blog traffic. Of course he meant for humor. The real golden rules are coming from statistics, not from a few elites. To get real useful statistics, we need treat statistics scientifically, that is not to trhrowaway any "bad" data when doing the statistics. In blogging specifically, we need include all blogsphere, not just the top technorati.

Potential

People often believe we, as human species, have great potential. In numbers, it is often said we only uses 1% of our potential. Imagine the possiblity of explore our own hidden potential!

A famous story that backs up the 99% potential claim is the movie Rain Man, which is based on the real person -- Kim Peek, who can memorize stuff on signt and do calculations like a machine. It is fascinating, and it is REAL! Just imagine the possiblity of we, ordinary people, can release this potential -- by drugs or rays -- what we will be able to achieve!

I used to do that "WoW" on reading such stories, but now, as I grow older, and gain more senses, I start to question this potential claim. I don't think we are only using 1% of our possible potential. We, as human in general, are doing 100% of what we are capable of, and we are quite successful in surviving this world. When I read the report on Kim Peek again, now I see the other side, his disability in physical skills, and the fact Rayman having a far less chances of surviving without other people's special care and attendance. So basically it is essentially a sacrifice of certain ability to gain some other ability. As a millions of years of evolution, I believe the current ability allocation of our brain and body is at the optimum to survive. And any re-allocations -- sacrificing certain ability to gain stronger ability of some others -- are often leaving the whole entity more vulnarable.

Of course there will be some people smarter than the other people, in certain area and in certain environment; and there probably will be some room to increase our inteligence and overall ability in fighting the nature. But I don't think there is anywhere with 99% of potential waiting for us to dig.

Steve Pavlina is a psychic

I only ran across Steve Pavlina's blog very recently, on an article of how to become an early riser. Immediately, I had a lot of respect for him and liked his blogs. He seems to be strong minded and very successful in his personal development; in contrast to myself, with every intention to be elite, but in many aspects, a not successful person.

Steve recently start to blog about his psychic experience. Surely fascinating read, but naturally provokes my physical view of the nature. I find it fun to blog some comments against his articles.

people deny psychic phenomena because of lack of experience.

Surely, "seeing is believing" :). However, it is not necessary to directly "see" something to believe something. That is where science plays. Essentially, science is useing abstract rules -- ultimately, math -- to connect what you see with what you want to or don't want to believe. If there is no proved way to connect from what you see with certain claim, then there is not enough reasons to either believe or disbelieve in the claim. Now on psychic phenomena, please show the logical connection from accepted knowledge to what you claim, other wise, to strongly support it or strongly deny it is equally foolish.

people deny psychic because their subconcious doesn't accept it even if they experience it.

Well, the whole scientific training is about not to accept what you see without establishing necessary connections to what has already been accepted. In common words, we are seeking explanations. It is foolish to use imaginary explanations that based on an imaginary or unprooved link. Of course it is also foolish to deny what we experience without necessary proofs.

"Once you become aware of your sixth sense, accept it as real, and develop some basic competence to the point where you’re able to trust it, the next step is integration."

I think the whole claim of psychic is foolish, not because I don't believe their experience of what they claim, but because the logic they are supporting. They ask you to believe based on un-verified 'theories'. I am quite at peace with people just claim they can do certain things. They are interesting, and when I had time and resource, I will be facinated to study it, either to prove to deny it or to accept it. But those that trying to persuade others to accept what ever their theories without proof, are foolish. Fools are OK. We often realize ourselves be a fool from time to time. And then, there are some, quite some, that are acting fool but with a very unfoolish reasons. Those are whom we should be aware of.

Checking TV Schedule?

Do you regularly check what is on your TV by flipping pages of "TV Guide" or your local newspaper? I used to do that. Then one day I realized all the tv schedules are availible on the internet FREE and my habit of flipping papers become googling for "tv schedules". It works great! As long as I keep an updated bookmark in my browser, I can check whether there is anything worth watching at few mouse clicks.

After years of being online tv grid viewer, I find all the tv listings, albeit convienient, boring. They have different background colors for different genres, such as movies and sports. But that is it. How I wish we can have a customizable tvlistings that can have more graphics and highlite what I am really interested shows.

Then I discovered the good news. The major tv listing provider -- Zap2It, has offered a free subscription to their tv listings to all non-commercial uses. So after played with it for a while, here it is: WhatIsOnTv.info.

Of course, being able to customize, whatisontv.info only lists the local tv schedules -- currently Comcast Cable Chicago west suburban listings. I will publish the software free, so any one that interested in it can have their own customized listings.